Greg Clarke 8 MAY 2013

“The concept of the church’s care of ‘the poor’ was basic to the founding of the earliest hospitals. The hospital was, in origin and conception, a distinctively Christian institution, rooted in Christian concepts of charity and philanthropy. There were no pre-Christian institutions in the ancient world that served the purpose that Christian hospitals were created to serve, that is, offering charitable aid, particularly health care, to those in need.”

So writes Gary Ferngren, Professor of History at Oregon State University , in his meticulous study Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity. Ferngren makes the case that benevolence in the ancient world was not only lacking, but even frowned upon, and that the introduction of Christian ideas such as the value of every individual, the need to show agape (selfless, sacrificial love such as the love Jesus Christ showed for all humanity) and social responsibility beyond class commitments was the background to most of the charitable instincts and institutions that christianised nations like Australia now take for granted.

Ferngren also emphasises that as the Roman Empire under Constantine became increasingly warm towards some aspects of Christianity, the development of charities (hospitals, poor houses, specialised care centres for orphans, the aged and the diseased) became a joint church-state venture. Tax concessions for the churches enabled them to pour effort and resources into fulfilling their religious service: caring for all of God’s creatures without reference to creed, race, religion or social status.

Today, one such institution celebrates its 200th birthday – the Benevolent Society. And while it may seem a long way from the poorhouses of Constantinople to the streets of nineteenth-century Sydney, the principles that led to the founding of the Benevolent Society are themselves found back there in the early days of the social outworking of the way of Jesus Christ.

In 1813, a free settler named Edward Smith Hall began what is known today as the Benevolent Society. The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and Benevolence was an association of “friends of Christian benevolence” who wished to relieve the distress of many an early citizen of the colony. Governor Macquarie initially was not impressed, thinking Smith Hall was a something of a time-waster. But Macquarie subsequently changed his views and Smith Hall played an important role in the founding of the first Bank (1817, now Westpac), the first independent newspaper (The Sydney Monitor) and the nation’s oldest continuous institution (The Bible Society, founded one month before the bank). Smith Hall’s society of benevolence began on 8 May 1813 to care for the distressed as well as to promote missionary work and the “sacred duties of religion.”

This initial work was valuable, and we have the careful records of the one thousand people who were assisted in those first few years of activity. However, the founding of the Bible Society in 1817 diverted significant money from Smith Hall’s Society. It was noted by William Cowper, the Rector of St Philip’s Church Hill, that two Societies – one for promoting Christian knowledge through dissemination of the Bible, and one for acts of benevolence – would probably be a better way forward. Hence, in 1818, the Benevolent Society of New South Wales was formed by an act of the Bible Society, with the express aim of “relief of the poor, aged and infirm and for other benevolent purposes.” But this is not to say that religion was being stripped out of the society’s work – on the contrary, its benevolent aims were to include the encouragement of “industrious habits amongst the indigent poor as well as to afford them Religious instruction and Consolation in their distress.”

I find the shared history of the Bible Society and the Benevolent Society delightful, because it provides an excellent historical illustration of the manner in which Christian ideas and social benefit go hand-in-hand. Just as Christianity instigated new levels of charity in the Roman Empire, so the Christian faith drove (and still drives) many charitable endeavours in the early settlement of Australia.

Today, the Benevolent Society acknowledges its Christian origins and, gratefully and graciously, the role played by the Bible Society. But it describes itself as a “not-for-profit and non-religious organization.” It is overwhelmingly funded by government grants, and the place of the Christian church seems by and large diminished in its culture and programmes. It did and continues to do what can readily be described as work mandated by the Old and New Testaments: caring for orphans and the outcast, running hospitals (no longer called asylums) and advocating for the rights of the underprivileged (like its great work campaigning for the old-age pension). Although such activities can indeed be carried out by Christian believers and other compassionate citizens alike, it can be fairly claimed that the biblical worldview generated the atmosphere that normalised such charitable work.

As Stephen Judd and Anne Robinson, leaders in the charity sector, write in their book Driven By Purpose: Charities that make a difference, “The Christian organization exists on its religious foundations, and its activities are ‘faith in action’ … However, many organisations in attempting to fit into a particular category of tax concession charity, find their purpose and identity lost in the statement of activities.” This is an increasingly difficult issue in our political and social climate. How can an organisation be shaped by its specific religious values, but also receive the support of the State? And will the State be willing to acknowledge that without being “driven by purpose,” it is hard to sustain such charitable efforts?

The marketing department would request me to make such statements in a much more positive way: how much more good could be done if the charity sector, spurred on by beliefs and ethics such as those found in the Christian religion, was incentivised and supported even further? History has shown it to be true that a motivated Christian community can change the world for good – indeed, how I long for a time when this is once again seen as a great asset to civil society, rather than a cause for concern and regulatory intervention.

It is an uncomfortable truth that many charitable endeavours simply wouldn’t have started without the Christian faith to drive them. This is by no means to suggest that non-Christian people or societies are lacking in benevolence and charity; rather, it is an acknowledgement of the peculiar power of the Christian worldview to establish and sustain the kind of philanthropy that has become popular in the Western world. The former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams summarised this idea in a lecture on civil and religious law in 2008:

“It never does any harm to be reminded that without certain themes consistently and strongly emphasised by the ‘Abrahamic’ faiths, themes to do with the unconditional possibility for every human subject to live in conscious relation with God and in free and constructive collaboration with others, there is no guarantee that a ‘universalist’ account of human dignity would ever have seemed plausible or even emerged with clarity.”

In other words, can we assume that Australian society would have its wonderful charitable institutions without the influence of Christian teaching? Graeco-Roman paganism had little to no philosophical basis for charity, and it wasn’t until Christian concepts such as “the equality of God’s image-bearers” arrived that anything changed.

But the next question is even harder: can we assume that such institutions can be severed by the State from their theological and ethical roots without losing the heart of the endeavour? I sincerely hope that, in this case, time will not tell.

Greg Clarke is Chief Executive Officer of The Bible Society Australia.

Note – Greg Clarke is ‘arguing that Christianity shifted Graeo-Roman culture’s concepts of philanthropy’. He is not ‘addressing the benevolent history of other cultures’. What’s more, he says, ‘I’m not arguing that Christians invented medicine!’ Rather, ‘My argument is our western health institutions probably wouldn’t have emerged without the influence of Christian ideas’.

ABC RELIGION AND ETHICS

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/05/08/3754498.htm